Age-based differences in preferences and affective reactions towards a robot's personality during interaction

The design and use of social robots addressed to the children population is a growing research field. The understanding of how the children react, or what are their preferences towards a robot with different styles of interaction is an important aspect to maximise the construction of a social bond between the robot and the child. In this paper we describe an experiment to assess these affective reactions and preferences based on an age-based stratification. A Wizard-Of-Oz scenario was used to design a playing mission where the child guides the robot, via voice commands, through a maze while collecting sweets and avoiding obstacles. Every participant interacted with two robots during the session. Two types of personalities were modelled in the robots with the same physical appearance: the agreeableness, and its opposite, disagreeableness personality trait. A total of 174 children between 6 and 11 years old took part in the experiment. The data about the affective reactions and preferences of the children towards the robots were collected through a multiple choice questionnaire. Significative statistical differences based on the age were found in the self-reported information provided by the children. These differences were noticeable in the youngest children (aged 6-7) with respect to the rest of the participants.